During the last several decades, car designers and manufacturers have implemented a variety of systems designed to enhance both the safety and convenience offered by their vehicles. Some of these systems that have become common on modern cars, such as anti-lock braking (e.g., ABS) and electronic stability control (e.g., ESC), improve driving safety by improving braking performance and reducing traction loss. Other vehicle systems, such as cruise control and the automated parallel parking systems offered as luxury options on a variety of cars, are designed to simplify the driving experience. More recently, vehicle engineering teams have been working on the development of fully autonomous vehicles, such vehicles being generally viewed as the next natural step in the progression of smart cars. Although initially the use of autonomous vehicles may be limited to industrial transport systems and simple automated people movers, as their use becomes accepted, autonomous vehicles are expected to (i) reduce traffic accidents and injuries, (ii) improve the mobility of the elderly as well as those people that are incapable of driving, (iii) provide drivers with more free time, (iv) decrease commuting time, and (v) free up more parking space.
Although all smart cars rely on sensor systems to monitor relevant vehicle and environmental conditions, fully autonomous vehicles require extremely sophisticated sensor systems in order to insure the safety of both the vehicle's passengers and anyone else that may be in proximity to the vehicle. Such sensor systems typically monitor vehicle performance (e.g., speed, turning radius, etc.), ambient conditions (e.g., light level, external temperature, weather conditions, etc.) and the car's proximity to both inanimate and animate objects (e.g., pedestrians, other vehicles, buildings, trees, signs, etc.). Given the importance of detection speed and accuracy, autonomous vehicles often rely on multiple sensor systems operating in unison, these sensor systems utilizing various detection schemes (e.g., camera-based, radar, lidar, etc.). While lidar systems have proven to provide rapid and accurate obstacle detection, their usefulness to date has been limited by packaging constraints, power requirements, and eye safety. Accordingly, what is needed is an energy efficient lidar system that operates at a low enough intensity to be eye safe while still providing an adaptive long range solution with packaging flexibility. The present invention provides such a lidar system.